Anon: Mad Jack's Cockatoo

There's a man that went out in the floodtime and drought

By the banks of the outer Barcoo,

They called him Mad Jack 'cause the swag on his back

Was the perch for an old cockatoo.

By the towns near and far, in sheds, shanty and bar

Came the yarns of Mad Jack and his bird,

And this tale I relate (it was told by a mate)

Is just one of the many I've heard.

Now Jack was a bloke who could drink, holy smoke,

He could swig twenty mugs to my ten,

And that old cockatoo, it could sink quite a few,

And it drank with the rest of the men.

One day when the heat was a thing hard to beat,

Mad Jack and his old cockatoo

Came in from the West – at the old Swagman's Rest

Jack ordered the schooners for two.

And when these had gone down he forked out half a crown

And they drank till the money was spent:

Then Jack pulled out a note from his old tattered coat,

And between them they drank every cent.

Then the old cockatoo, it swore red, black and blue,

And it knocked all the mugs off the bar;

Then it flew through the air, and it pulled at the hair

Of a bloke who was drinking Three Star.

And it jerked out the pegs from the barrels and kegs,

Knocked the bottles all down from the shelf,

With a sound like a cheer it dived into the beer

And it finished up drowning itself.

When at last Mad Jack woke from his sleep he ne’er spoke,

But he cried like a lost husband’s wife,

And with each falling tear made a flood with the beer,

And the men had to swim for their life.

Then Mad Jack he did drown; when the waters went down

He was lying there stiffened and blue,

And it’s told far and wide that stretched out by his side

Was his track-mate – the old cockatoo.

An Australian bush ballad from around the turn of the twentieth century. A cockatoo (this would have been a white sulphur-crested cockatoo) perched on one's back may seem a danger to ears and eardrums, but apparently they're well-behaved when tamed.